A blog for reviews… that's really not much of a blog

Foreword: Oh man, it’s so hard to do Schoolwork, Studying, Work, MMOs, AND Eroge in a short span of 24 hours! I really need to cut back on other stuff, but it’s not like I can, right…? Q_Q;

Right onto the review, this game was prioritized due to a request, and since it was a title I’ve heard to be good, I also gave it a try.

Overall, this was a very excellent game. Even with story rating achieving near perfect scores, however, I’ve managed to find something to complain about. I hope to explain everything as I go through the game.

Summary: In the 21st century, some individuals have mysterious powers that allow them to bend physics and become something similar to “ESP”. These individuals gather in a place called “School”, as they are not accepted in society–often being tormented or even worse, killed.

It’s unknown how this “ESP” comes to existence, but it’s certain that there are some individuals who have greater powers than others… These members in the “School” called “Crown” maintain the order of the system and if one of these powers called “HMI” goes astray, it’s their job to make sure it doesn’t cause harm to anyone.

Narita Shinri mistakes his plane flight and accidentally arrives to Japan half-a-day early. It’s night, and he is accompanied with his loyal maid, who seems to comment cynically on everything he says.

It’s actually a fortunate thing that Shinri mistakes his flight time, as he decides to go to the school he is about to transfer to: he then encounters a group of people known as the AHM who is pointing a gun at a girl who Shinri “falls in love at first sight”.

After saving the girl, Shinri kneels and kisses the girl’s hand… Only to stand up and fondle her breasts (which he “fell in love at first sight”) right afterwards. As with a normal reaction, the girl knocks him out cold.

and thus starts the story of Hello Lady.

Seriously. I could have never guessed what happens next

Story Length: Slightly Long (~25 hours) Complete Story Clearing Difficulty: Difficult Comments: A relatively difficult storyline, due to the fact I was not used to Akatsuki Work’s games until now (No really. I wasn’t). The game requires you to pay attention to the character SDs on the right of the choices which increases or decreases each character’s “affinity” which can be viewed on the Configuration Scene. Even if that’s too confusing, there will be a “Hint Corner” at each bad end where you can see what you need to do to actually achieve the heroine routes.

As a general rule, Narita’s Vengeance Affinity should be high (but if you make it too high, you achieve a bad end), while keeping the target Heroine’s Affinity to be high as well.

(Or you can just use a walkthrough)

One needs to finish Tamao’s and Sorako’s route before accessing Eru’s route, which after you clear, Saku’s route appears

This was Narita’s “group of friends”, which includes his sister on the right. They look familiar, right?

Character Design Rating: 6/10 Story Rating: 8/10 Protagonist Rating: 8/10 Game Quality: Moderate Overall Rating: 8/10 Rating Comments: A relatively high rating game, the most noteworthy thing is the protagonist rating which scores at a whopping 8/10. Note that I’m extremely harsh about protagonist ratings, and Shinri wouldn’t be an exception. However, I really liked his design to hold such a characteristic since it seemed to all click in place with the background, setting, and the relationships he had in the past.

Story rating gets a major boost from all the descriptive words used in the game (more specifically, in the battle scenes) that made it much easier to imagine scenes right in my head)

On the other hand, Character Design wasn’t so good. Perhaps because of how colorful the protagonist was, the heroines seem to fall slightly or seem a little more dull. While each character was unique, the game never really gives a good transition for their relationship with Narita (so it actually seems like the two characters are falling in love for the smallest reasons… Actually, I should be happy that the “reason” is actually there =3=)

Character Summary: Let’s go in the order that you should consider going through.

Let’s start with Narita Shinri, though, our main protagonist.

Shown at the beginning of the game with his maid, it’s quite obvious that this is our carefree protagonist who is… relatively colorful. He has so much confidence in himself that he snorts that people’s criticisms, and is completely in his own pace most of the time.

This is including the fact that he suddenly grabs the breasts of a girl who he JUST met, saying that they are “Godly”, and this attitude continues throughout the entire game.

His invitation to the “School” means that he also has a special power called “Halo”, and he actually uses this power at certain points in the game. It is not until Saku’s route that his powers are explained, however. Even as the member of the “Crown”, Narita refuses to participate in its activities using the excuse that he is busy. Perhaps, though, there is a bigger reason than this.

Narita himself was very interesting, and he does have secrets of his own that’s revealed (only to the readers!) rather early in the game.

First heroine is Tamao, who is (even at first glance) very fit and skilled with physical tasks. It’s quickly shown in game that due to her highly able body, she is slightly missing in the intelligence department, and this directly contradicts with another heroine: many of the beginning comical scenes show the two fighting.

Tamao herself doesn’t seem to stand out much, and in some of the other routes, show her completely disappear to “take care of some private business” according to her words. Her route delves deep into what this “personal business” is, and (obviously) Narita gets involved in it.

Tamao’s powers involve physical enhancement, where she can drastically increase her physical power and speed. There are also some other things she can do with this ability, but I think it’s best if I kept it hidden for now. She actually uses this power after Narita gropes her breasts then insults her by saying it’s relatively small. This scene with Tamao is one of the first battle scenes, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Generally, I didn’t like how this character was never really in the spotlight outside of her route, when she should simply disappear from the crew. However, I do appreciate that the game does bring her back in the climactic routes in all of the routes.

Next is Sorako, a strange girl who is wearing a guy’s uniform as an effort to seem like one. However, Narita recognizes this contradiction immediately (because come on! Her voice sounds really feminine too!), and of her rather passive personality. It is also only Sorako, at first, that actually welcomes Narita to the dorms because it is very unusual for males to become “Crown” members (at least, there wasn’t any in the past”, and how each girl had bad first impressions of Narita exposed him to a more hostile environment.

Sorako’s relatively welcoming attitude towards Narita actually relieves him to a certain extent, and her affection for him becomes greater as Narita saves Sorako’s life in a gas explosion during a “mission”.

Sorako was arguably my favorite character in the sense that her background was most corresponding throughout the routes, and she is also who I would call “the saddest character”. There is very little comical scenes involving Sorako, and I realized in her route what the reason for this was.

The relationship of Sorako and Narita is revealed in full (ironically in Saku’s route though), and even within her own route, I actually appreciated the “ambiguous ending”.

Right onto Eru. This loli character who seems to be overly affectionate towards Saku is actually an otaku herself, knowing very well about subculture. It is actually Saku who implemented this knowledge to the girl.

After Tamao loses to Narita and Sorako feels more affectionate for him, Eru takes it upon herself that she needs to eliminate this outsider, so she doesn’t need to involve Saku in anything. This then leads her to simply keeping watch on him 24 hours a day, which includes night-time, when Eru simply invades Narita’s room and insists that he simply “imagine her as a cute dakimakura”.

However, as with any story where a heroine follows a protagonist around with caution, she soon becomes more affectionate for Narita as he helps Eru herself with various things, and as the two become relatively close, Eru decides to use her body to blackmail Narita to “help” her with something.

In reality though, there’s a scene where Eru attempts this “seduction” with her underwear, but Narita ignores this completely and goes for her breasts instead, saying that “they have potential” (at this point, the readers can see that Narita has a serious boob-fetish. It is actually never revealed what the reason for this is, though)

…and this would be the SDCG depicting this

Last is Saku! Seemingly the central heroine, the game makes it clear that this “head”, or also known as “Crown Insignia” is the most powerful HMI user on the entire school. Despite this, Saku never really uses her powers until you get into the end of Eru’s route, and it’s only in her route where her powers, “Lear King III” is revealed.

Including the time when Narita saves Saku from AHM at the beginning scenes, it’s not once, but TWICE that Narita saves her life, a bit further down into the story. The girl feels very grateful to this new Crown member, but also despises him for his rude actions when they first met, as well as the fact that Narita seems to oppose the will of the “School”, of which Saku loves very much.

This obviously causes the two characters to fly sparks and argue quite often.

However, with the disappearance of Mitori will be the connection factor for these characters, when Saku will try to figure out the truth behind Mitori’s disappearance.

Saku’s route ends with the epilogue, which I’ll summarize as best as I can in a separate spoiler page.

Believe it or not: this is actually Tamao.

Sexual Content: Low

Comments: So let’s get into the Goods and Bads. As stated, the battle scenes are splendid; to the point I can imagine the fight scenes right in my head. The descriptive words enhance the “visual” element, and while there are very little “battle CGs”, I didn’t feel as if it was too necessary.

On the other hand, the romance element actually BROUGHT DOWN the quality quite a bit. The characters seem to fall in love randomly (especially for Narita, who is actually really random), and not much of the affection is explained.

In addition, the Finale was extremely poorly planned. Simply put, it was another plot similar to Deus ex Machina, except it’s explained… Simply put, the ending was too convenient. This was in addition to the fact that the game introduces a new character that was actually completely unnecessary to the story. I also don’t like how this “Finale” was simply attached to the very end of Saku’s route: it would have been better if it was placed in a “True End”, instead.

Long story short, take out the Finale completely and you have a kamige.

Great design of the protagonist, though, as you rarely see two-faced protagonists in eroge (because apparently, it’s not taken as a positive means for the majority of the readers… who says the protagonist has to be good?) and despite this “two-faced” personality, his love for boobs is consistent throughout the entire game.

One can definitely predict Narita’s joy in this situation.

On another thought, did anyone else notice that there is never an adult that possesses Halo? I found this to be extremely strange, and considering how it’s possible to “gain Halo” (Ascension) and also “lose” it, I kinda saw this element similar to what we commonly know as “chuunibyou”. I know, ridiculous, but that’s really what it seems like.

Affection for the Characters: Moderate

CG Score: 5/10. Average CG, really. A few SDCGs here and there, but nothing too impressive. Music Score: 6/10. Love the OP and Insert Songs (and their arrangements). The soundtracks themselves? Not too much… They sound too generic and simple

Addictiveness: Low

Conclusion: A very good game which is actually my first one from Akatsuki Works! I also have several other titles from them in my backlog, which will have to be prioritized a bit more after seeing this great title. Quite unfortunately, this game didn’t do so well for me due to the Finale being absolute shit, and this is really unfortunate since the rest of the game is well worthy of being called “kamige” material.

Thanks for your encouragement! At the moment, I’m working on creating a “relatively” comprehensive Japanese learning guideline for players wishing to learn Japanese. It’s only a guideline, but it’ll definitely be useful. At the moment, it’s around 30% complete + my laziness and stuff to do in real life, but I’ll get to it soon enough…

I think it’s pretty hard to write a romance with “my pace” character like our MC here. This kind of story is better with cool action after all. Ichaicha moment like other games will make character like him OOC in my opinion.
I’m just getting started but it’s pretty good and funny. I can’t predict Narita’s action at all. (Like you, that first scene with Saku caught me off-guard!)
It’s also very, very rare that Narita addressed himself with 私. Most of MC in VN use 俺 or lesser extent, 僕. The only MC I can think of that address himself with 私 is Weiss from Madou Koukaku. Although he use it when he talked with his superiors only. He normally used 俺 when he talk with his equal or under.

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